What to Expect at Next Week’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council Meeting

Annie Feldmeier Adams came to MBAC in 2014 to describe all the different ways that the Lakefront Trail closures and detours were difficult for cyclists.

Soon after I heard that Lisa Kuivenen had tragically died while riding their bike after a truck driver tried to merge across the Milwaukee Avenue bike lane I got a little furious. I was upset that her fatal crash was continuing a pattern of cyclist deaths – Blaine Klingenberg and Virginia Murray died after commercial vehicle drivers made turns at intersections and ran them over. I was also upset that there aren’t enough protections on the streets to protect cyclists from drivers who aren’t paying attention.

Though my Twitter account, I invited everyone who dislikes the status quo to come to the next Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting on September 7 at City Hall so that they could learn first hand what city officials are doing to achieve Vision Zero, or no deaths in traffic, by 2022, and contribute their own thoughts.

I created a Facebook event for the meeting, and so far 50 people have indicated they’re coming. It would be a record breaking meeting if more than 15 or so unaffiliated “members of the public” came to MBAC.

Let’s talk

The council, composed of representatives of city agencies and heads of non-profit organizations, devotes very little time of the scheduled 90 minute meeting to hearing from the public, often 10-15 minutes depending on if previous agenda items take longer than allotted. Department of Transportation commissioner, Rebekah Scheinfeld, also the MBAC chair, discusses statistics of the number of people who’ve died in the previous quarter for about three minutes.

Typically someone from the DOT’s Bike Program gives a rundown on recent work to restripe and build new bike lanes. He describes what CDOT intends to finish before winter makes installation schedules difficult.

Charlie Short, who heads the Bike Program’s safety programs, shares how many events the department’s safety ambassadors attended to teach Chicagoans about rules of the road. A representative from Divvy may probably talk about new stations installed, and how many people have signed up for the Divvy For Everyone program since the last announcement.

Sometimes there’s new information. In February Eric Hanns relayed the preliminary results of a data analysis that showed the number of serious and fatal injuries to cyclists is on a downward trend in Chicago.

What you won’t hear much of is a discussion of how council members are planning to address areas where there are major problems for cyclists, like six-way intersections or streets with a lot of trucks and bike lane-blocking. You won’t hear what’s being done to deal with the growing number of people cycling through Wicker Park and dodging beer delivery trucks, or that there’s still no bike lane where the Streets for Cycling Plan says they should have gone.

CDOT is good at showing their success installing what they’ve installed but they don’t tell much, likely given the risk they may have disclosing details of negotiations with aldermen and groups whose approvals for proposals they seek. Such a policy doesn’t help vulnerable road users, though.

It wasn’t until I asked 33rd Ward Alder Deb Mell for a status update about why buffered bike lanes CDOT had proposed for Belmont hadn’t been striped. Her office out that the Chicago Transit Authority wasn’t ready to accept them.

CDOT had come to one of the ward’s Transportation Action Commitee meetings to say they wanted to have buffered bike lanes installed on Belmont in 2015 from Kedzie to Halsted. Mell’s assistant Jeff Sobczyk asked CDOT about the delay they replied that CTA had concerns. Spokesperson Jeffrey Tolman said, “Specifically, the configuration (narrowness) of the street at some points makes adding buffered bike lanes while still providing sufficient room for safe and efficient bus operations difficult,” adding that these locations “would be a challenge to operations while maintaining safety as the top priority.”

I’ve asked for a list of those locations on Belmont as CTA currently runs several bus routes on several streets with buffered bike lanes, including Clark, Halsted, Jackson, Broadway, Division, Augusta, State, and King.

Come to listen

I don’t think you’ll be satisfied if you come to MBAC to demand answers. Attend ready to listen and learn, and there might be something for you. My friend and colleague in the fight for safer Chicago streets, Gin Kilgore, has an effective and civil tactic for being heard. Kilgore is also the program director at Ride Illinois, which was formerly known as the League of Illinois Bicyclists.

She firsts thanks the council for hosting the meeting, and having a public comment period. She then praises the work CDOT or another organization has done so far. Next she makes her request, which could be a question on why a certain design was chosen, inquiring about a street that hadn’t gotten its promised neighborhood greenway, or an open question on what the city believes it can do to reduce the number of motorists blocking bike lanes.

Part of her request is to seek an understanding of the situation. “I’m [about] people trying to understand existing conditions and parameters before jumping to conclusions,” she told me today.

Finally she offers an idea or possible solution on how the project implementer should involve others, which could include Kilgore or other people in the room, to get something done better or sooner.

This method essentially sets a challenge on the council’s collective hands by saying “we’re here to help you reach safe cycling goals, so figure out how to use it.”

Sobczyk, of the 33rd Ward office, told me that next week’s MBAC meeting is on Mell’s schedule. I hope nothing more pressing comes up. She would be the first alder in the last five years to attend an MBAC since 39th Ward Alder Margaret Laurino came in 2011 to promote her ordinance banning cyclists from using cellphones.

I hope to see you there next Wednesday. No RSVP is necessary, so come to City Hall, 121 N LaSalle Street, room 1103 at 3 p.m. View the tentative agenda.

Don’t know if I’ll be able to attend, but here’s a cautionary story: I had to drive downtown Saturday morning to run several errands, and spent almost 20 minutes sitting in traffic on eastbound Roosevelt between Clinton and State, while car after car passed me IN THE BIKE LANE, forcing cyclists to weave for safety. I’ve ridden that bike lane, too, and it’s scary on a good day. If traffic on other Bears game days is as bad as it was Saturday, a serious redesign including a well-protected bike lane is needed.

Attend the meeting people! Good to see the constraints & successes your government has on implementation. Also good for them to see you at these meeting and hear your concerns, so they can convey to their bosses the need for change. & BTW the Navy Pier Lakefront Trail “detour” for the Flyover bridge construction is still a disaster & could easily be fixed as suggested by numerous individuals and groups back in 2014. Recently a group of commuter cyclists reached out to the city (again) to ask that it be changed. They were told the current detour will will remain in place until construction is complete.

Roosevelt was an awesome street to bike on when they first created the striped lanes. Then the City had to shut down Congress for lengthy repairs, and motorists swarming Roosevelt routinely used the bike/bus lane as an extra traffic lane. Apparently much of the traffic that just switched to Roosevelt never switched back to Congress, because it has never been the same. Allowing the bike lane striping to fade into oblivion has also not helped IMO. I’m hopeful they’ll someday extend the streetscape treatment east of State west to at least Halsted, because that was a great backdoor route to get from the lakefront/South Loop to Milwaukee to Elston.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

At last week’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting, Chicago Department of Transportation deputy commissioner Luann Hamilton discussed the fact that there were no fatal bike crashes in the city between May and August of this year. “It’s great, especially because we just got through the summer cycling season window, with more cyclists out than ever,” she […]

About 45 “civilians” – people who weren’t obligated to attend – showed up for yesterday’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting yesterday, making it one of the most democratic MBAC meetings ever. The council, which meets quarterly at City Hall during the workday, usually draws only about 10-15 attendees who aren’t there in an official capacity, many of whom are […]

Lots of places have three-foot passing laws requiring motorists to give cyclists a safe buffer while overtaking them. Now one Oklahoma City legislator, Eighth Ward City Council Member Pat Ryan, has come up with a new, passive-aggressive spin on the passing law. Local elected officials will soon consider a piece of “safety” legislation that would require cyclists to […]

This February, Steven Vance reported that the Illinois Department of Transportation has been prohibiting the installation of protected bike lanes on state jurisdiction roads in Chicago at least until the Chicago Department of Transportation collects three years of “safety data” on existing Chicago protected lanes. That means the earliest the ban would be lifted would […]